


Beja Kamp Der

by lightsaroundyourvanity



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 20:05:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3663243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightsaroundyourvanity/pseuds/lightsaroundyourvanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke finds Lexa in the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beja Kamp Der

Clarke doesn't know how far she walks before she spots her through the trees. Maybe hours. Maybe days. She appears, dreamlike, like a mirage in the distance, shimmering past yards of hot air and oblivious to how close Clarke is. Clarke can't help but think that's sloppy, a lone, wry thought that pierces through the resigned shock of finding Lexa here.

 "Lexa." Clarke hasn't spoken aloud in awhile, and her voice cracks bitterly around the name. In the back of her mind, she'd always known that as soon as she'd turned her back on Camp Jaha, a part of her was headed here. To her. But now that Lexa is in her crosshairs, Clarke isn't sure that she's ready to see her. Bile and rage burn in her throat, and she wills herself to just walk away, because she's not ready not to scream, and she's tired of screaming. She's tired of rage.

Her feet move forward anyway.

She's close enough to see residual kohl smudged on Lexa's cheek when a twig cracks underfoot and Lexa's head jerks up, and her body snaps to alertness. Her eyes rove the clearing, until they inevitably lock on Clarke, and neither one of them can find the strength to look away.

"Lexa," Clarke says again, and her voice is bell clear this time, but bitterness lingers all the same.

"Klark Skaikru." Lexa's voice carries, lilting and unsure, and Clarke's eyes flick down when Lexa's thighs brace, like she's ready for a fight, like she half expects Clarke to launch herself at her. And really, she's not wrong. Would Clarke be in the same position, heartsick, gnawed at by sullen guilt, cast out in exile, self-inflicted and emotional but necessary all the same, if Lexa hadn't betrayed her? 

Clarke doesn't think so. There would have been losses, and Clarke would have felt them. But they would have been taken right. Nobly, even. Clarke romanticizes these deaths in hindsight because they never were, and because the air stinks with sour treachery right now, and because Clarke can barely stand to walk alongside rivers these days.

She tenses, and matches Lexa's stance. 

Lexa's eyes narrow. "If you're here to kill me, don't bother," she says. "I've seen you fight."

"I'm not," Clarke replies. It's true. She's angry and she's ruthless, but she's grown tired of taking lives. "I didn't even know you'd be here." 

Lexa relaxes, slightly. "What are you doing here, Clarke?" Lexa's head tilts to one side and Clarke is struck by how vulnerable, how sincere Lexa is able to look. _It's an act_ , she reminds herself. Lexa is cold. She acts this way because she knows that it is the easiest way to get what she needs out of Clarke.

Because that's any of it was, wasn't it? The long looks, the singling out. The kiss. Lexa had played Clarke, and Clarke had let her. Because she had made Clarke feel like she was special. Because despite telling Lexa that she wasn't ready, a part of her had yearned towards Lexa from the first time they'd met. From the first... and god, Lexa must have _seen_ that. The Commander sees everything. A visionary, Kane had said. Lexa had used everything at her disposal to keep Clarke in check, to keep her from stirring up trouble, and Clarke had been arrogant enough to buy it all as genuine at face value. To think that there was nothing strange about Lexa wanting _her,_ pale and angry, with her soul still half fastened to the fading memory of an ark in the sky. 

And since the last thing Clarke wants is for any of this to slip behind her eyes today, she shrugs and sets her jaw. "I'm just walking," she says.

 "Your camp is a long way from here," Lexa points out, thoughtful and cool.

"I'm not with them any more," Clarke blurts, and then feels like smacking herself. She's giving away too much too fast. If this were an ambush, she would be toast. She still might be. Clarke doesn't know where she's supposed to stand with Lexa anymore. Had the alliance held, or was that a lie, too? Fleetingly, Clarke wishes she had stayed at Camp Jaha, if only for a few days, to get her bearings and gauge what she'd be walking herself into.

But that's not really what penance is about, is it?

Something hopeful lights up Lexa's face. Clarke doesn't trust it. "You're coming to Polis, then?" Lexa asks, and there's absurd warmth there, and the sting of it shatters the roof of Clarke's badly contained anger. She stalks forward. Forest scree crunches underfoot. And Lexa takes a nervous step backwards, and Clarke is sent spinning to a memory from the week before, of Lexa bowing under her rage and backing away. Clarke had felt powerful then, in control. She doesn't feel anything like that now.

"You think after what you pulled I would want to go _anywhere_ with you?" Clarke hisses. "Tell me something, Lexa: If you were just going to float us over like that, why even bother with the plan? Was it just to see the look on my face?"

Lexa's expression hardens, and her feet shift again, defensively. "Do you really think I'm petty enough to throw my people's lives into the air just to see the look on someone's face?" she asks.

"I don't know," says Clarke. "I'm starting to learn that I don't know the first thing about you." 

"You're right," Lexa snaps back. "You don't. But I didn't plan to betray you," she adds. "Mount Weather knew that we were coming. We would have been slaughtered. I saw a chance to take my people home, and I took it. What would you have done?"

"Not that," Clarke retorts, but Lexa raises an eyebrow, and Clarke can already tell that she sees right through her. 

"I hear all of the mountain men are dead," Lexa says pointedly. "Radiation leaks."

"That's not the same thing," snaps Clarke.

"Yes, it is," says Lexa. "You did what you had to do to save your people. You and I... we're the same, Clarke. You know we are."

"Will you just _stop?"_ Clarke can hear her voice turn dangerously high on the last word. "There's-- there is no we, you got that? I'm sick of this."

"Sick of what?" Lexa asks. 

Clarke opens her mouth, and then shuts it on a snide comment. "I'm sick of you acting like there's something going on between us."

"Isn't there?" Lexa walks closer to Clarke, with the grace of a hunter.

Clarke gulps. Her mouth feels dry. She and Lexa have closed the space between them. They stand face to face now, and if Clarke reached out with her hand, she could close it around Lexa's arm. Her fingers twitch, and then her lip curls. There's a chemical, magnetic reaction in being close to Lexa that Clarke can't quite explain-- but despite this, she's still angry. She's still hurt. 

So Clarke stills her twitching fingertips, and recoils from Lexa instead. "If you cared about me, you never would have done what you did to me," she says stubbornly. "And my people." She adds the last part hastily.

Lexa looks unmoved. "I knew you'd figure something out," she says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "And you did. Everyone is safe, are they not?"

"Lexa, _I killed three hundred people,_ " Clarke shoots back. "All of the mountain men. All of them. None of them are safe."

"And your people are safe because of it," Lexa replies. "You did what you had to do." 

_Just like I did,_ hangs unspoken in the air. And on it's heels, _I bear it so that they don't have to,_ Clarke's words to Bellamy an echo of Dante's to her.

But Clarke isn't in the mood to sort out the threads of pragmatism from the mess that is her life. She gets up in Lexa's face instead, her cheeks growing hot as she feels her expression darken. "Go float yourself, Lexa," she spits.

Lexa's veneer cracks. Her eyessnap, her lips curl in a scowl. " _Frag yu branwada_ ," she hisses back. "I'm sick of being your punching bag."

Outrage flares in Clarke, and on its heels, astonished guilt, because in a way, Lexa is right. Clarke is heavy with sin, and she wants to throw some of its weight onto Lexa, because she blames Lexa, but also because she thinks that she'll take it. It's selfish, which makes Clarke feel like shit, and that in turn makes her angrier, more reckless, more impulsive. 

She grabs Lexa by the shoulders, and even Clarke isn't sure what she's doing. She sees Lexa's eyes widen in surprise, hears her breath catch with suspicion and the tiniest edge of hope, and that's the last thing her mind registers before she's crushing her mouth against Lexa's, and sucking back Lexa's drawn in breath through her parted lips.  

She doesn't intend to kiss Lexa, but now that she has, it's rushing relief, better than any landed blow. Lexa returns the kiss hungrily, and it kills Clarke's lingering suspicion that Lexa never really wanted her. She guesses that yeah, she could be faking this-- but she doesn't think so. And when Lexa practically whimpers into Clarke's mouth a moment later, she _really_ doesn't think so.

This isn't redemption, but it tastes just as sweet. Clarke shoves at Lexa until she's backed up against a tree, and then she presses hard against her. Her hands curl in the tangled braids of Lexa's hair, and Lexa's breath rasps against Clarke's cheek between kisses. Clarke kisses Lexa again, fierce, and then breaks apart to stare at her. Their faces hover close enough together that their noses bump together and Clarke could drown in Lexa's eyes. 

"I thought you weren't ready," Lexa says carefully.

"I'm not," says Clarke. "That's not what this is about."

Clarke kisses Lexa again. She wonders if she should explain more, but she's not ready for that, either. Lexa seems to understand. Her mouth opens under Clarke's and her knee pushes between Clarke's legs, and Clarke can feel frenetic heat start to uncoil and rise inside her. She arches against Lexa and breaks their kiss so she can press her mouth to Lexa's cheeks, her jaw, her throat, revel in the breathless moan that escapes Lexa's lips and claim them against her own again. Clarke feels hot all over as she listens to Lexa unravel, as she feels herself start to fray. She writhes against Lexa, and their gasps twine together in the air. And their bodies twine together on the land.   

Lexa's hands grope towards Clarke's waist. Clarke's mind races alongside them, thinking _yes, yes, yes,_ but when Lexa's fingers actually reach her waistband and nimbly flick open the top button of her jeans, Clarke feels herself jerk away. Shock jars her, like cold water smacking against her heated skin, and when her eyes pop open, she's surprised that she doesn't see steam rise.

Lexa's mouth is parted and flushed, and her eyes are heavy lidded as she looks Clarke over. "What is it?" she asks. 

Clarke takes a step back from Lexa. She swallows. "I can't do this," she says. 

She wants to say more, but the words won't come. _I don't deserve this,_ and _I don't trust this,_ and _I'm still too angry to be reminded how sweet you taste._ She wants to lose herself inside Lexa, but she knows that it's a bad idea. She wants to be reckless, because she's got nothing to lose, but maybe she's just not wired that way.  

 So she takes another step backwards. "I gotta go," she says. She turns around and starts to walk, and grief and guilt and shame and yawning want thud through her when she moves.

She's halfway back to the woods when Lexa shouts, "Clarke!" and Clarke pulls up short. She looks over her shoulder. Lexa isn't very far away, but she looks small. She looks hurt. Part of Clarke wants to go back to her. A bigger part knows that it will only hurt more, in the end.

Clarke smiles at Lexa weakly. She raises her hand in a half hearted salute.

"May we meet again."

And so she goes. Her heart churns murky silt.

 


End file.
